What once ensured that I sat at a table next to the teacher is now posted, Monday through Friday.

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My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Thursday, March 19, 2015

When You Buys You One, You Gets You Two; or Public Transportation, AKA The Cheap Seats

6:42 a.m.: the heat wave in our immediate future, the one that will have me standing tomorrow at the bus stop, like a rich person, in 44 glorious degrees of early Spring-time thrall, is no where in sight.

It is a Thursday morning, cold and dark.

The bus arrives, and I climb its steps. I wave my MetroPass at the doohickey and walk to my seat of preference, a spot up the steps at the back of the bus, near the camera. I like to think that should anything untoward happen while engaged in commuting, it will be caught on tape and either a.) result in a conviction, b.) be shown on TV, or c.) lead to my finally being discovered as a runway model.

We are 15 minutes into the trip downtown when the men at the back of the bus get excited.

“Come on, man. Come On. Come ON. COME ON.”

My eyes swing to the right, to the left, spin counterclockwise before returning to their straight-ahead position.

It’s been a long time since the morning commute was this lively. I lean back in my seat, reach into my purse, pull out the book I keep for just such occasions. I switch my low-volume iPod to “off”.

“Aww, COME on, man!”

Another man laughs softly. “Shush, man. Call him later. Anyway, you be shoutin’. These good people goin’ to work, they don’t want to hear you.”

I am dying to turn around.

“Man, I don’t talk like no mouse, man,” says COME ON man. A combination of urban mush-mouth and side show barker, he’s got a baritone voice. “People hear me talk, they know they be getting’ the juicy-juice.”

“Oh, we be right upfront, all of us. We got the earnest, and we got the frank. Man, we be earnestly frank.”

“Man, I said you gotta be quiet.”

“You know, last week he be talking about gettin’ enough for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? It be Monday now. That’s why that man don’t be answering the phone. Come on, now! That man be detoxing.”

Both men laugh, full, open expressions of enjoyment. Heh, heh, heh. You right, you right.

The bus goes relatively silent, save for the coughing woman near the driver. We creep along the Nicollet Avenue mall, all-year cyclists scattering before us like skinny, helmeted cattle. I look out the windows at the storefronts, windows dressed, mannequins in swimwear and summer dresses.

“MMM,” grunts the COME ON man. “You know about that Joseph E. Banks? They be having buy you one, get you two.”

“Man, they got good clothes,” says the other man. “Good clothes.”

“Mm mm mmm,” the man with the juicy-juice says. “You know what? Maybe we find us Earnest, we do some shoppin’.”

20 comments:

I think Earnestness at the table next to us yesterday in the restaurant. He had enough for all 7 days in the coming week as well as all even numbered years in the coming century. He loudly repeated, "It's going down like Freakytown!" If we see him again, I'll point him north.

I sat in a doctor's office once listening to a man on his phone trying to score Oxycontin. Then he went to the window and tried to have his prescription redone for the current date, not next week. It was all smooth and practiced jargon and I thought of you and wished I had your little notebook.

I totally agree with joeh. Your view of the world and the way you write is so refreshing. Plus, I appreciate your translation of the bus conversation. My Rocky Mountain ears hear that dialect and just say "wwwwhaaaat arrr those dudes talkin' bout?"

Love the cyclists scattering. Out here they stay put and the bus slows to creep along behind them. Always when I'm in a hurry too. Meh, what can you do?44 degrees eh? I bet that snow is all melted now too.